HCC’s Online Tutoring Program: Improving Student Success Stephen Levey, Ed.D. Associate Vice Chancellor, Academic Instruction Deborah Hardwick Manager, Online Tutoring

About Houston Community College... Educates more than 75,000 students per semester 1 st for international student enrollment among U.S. community colleges Highly diverse student population: 1

What Were We Looking to Do? Use Online Tutoring to Increase: Access Success 2

Operational Procedures Loop 33 Develop a plan to implement service and measure the impact of online tutoring on student success. Implement service and conduct quantitative research. Assess results of the program. Implement improvements, conduct additional research. 3

Research Findings 937 tutoring sessions (units) observed For every one-unit increase in tutoring usage per semester, student GPA increased by approximately.05 points. Among all students observed: GPA Service Users2.915 Non-Users

Future Recommendations for Research Increased Outreach Track Demographic Groups Track Subject Areas Study Effect on Retention and Completion Future Research 5

Summary Online Tutoring: Addresses two of the primary commitments/tenets of the community college – increased access and student success Addresses a large, diverse student population Uses technology instead of letting technology use us Implements the HCC institutional effectiveness model Uses research to validate effectiveness of the service and plan for the future 6

And so it began … April, The Academic Dean, Southwest College, asked English tutoring supervisor to investigate online tutoring for English. May, 2006 – Meeting with Brand X sales rep and several English teachers held. Problems with oversight uncovered. “Why can’t we do it ourselves?” Sept. 11, 2006 – We went live with an English pilot. 7

Understanding HCC To understand the complexity we had to overcome in order to develop our online tutoring program, it is necessary to visualize the organizational structure of the institution. 8

Basic Numbers In September, 2006, it took us 11 days to receive 100 papers. Today, we average about 100 submissions per day. Since Sept. 11, 2006 … Over 35,000 students have registered and used the system. Tutors have worked over 40,000 hours. Tutors have responded to over 70,000 student submissions. We offer tutoring in 22 subject areas - and more. 9

Our Pre-Launch Goals Make English tutoring available all the time to everyone. Increase student’s skills and comfort levels. Save overhead and increase efficiency, thus making more money available for tutor salaries. Collect and analyze data about tutoring. 10

Critical Decisions What type of technology do we need? How do we supervise multiple disciplines? How do we provide contextualized content? (Tutors) We choose to: 1.Work with Askonline.net, a company that only provides tutoring support technology. It offers a variety of formats, archiving, reporting, and tech support. We look at Askonline as a partner, not just a vendor. 2.Hire current and recent ex-HCC faculty as tutors for contextual tutoring. 3.Market ourselves very aggressively among all our constituent groups. 11

Our Constituents Students Faculty HCC in General The Online Tutoring Profession 12

Money Matters When all the costs are added up… Self-staffed online tutoring costs less than externally-staffed for-hire companies, and the non-monetary rewards are so much greater. As a result of our increasing efficiency and knowledge… Our per-contact costs have fallen from $12.65/contact in FY 2008/2009 to $10.13/contact today. 13

Unexpected Benefits or “Serendipity” 14 The Chancellor’s Innovation Fund provided a small grant so we could develop a searchable data base (Find-a-Tutor) of all tutoring at HCC. We developed a toolbar that allows for consistency and speed in commenting on papers. We share it with faculty at HCC and schools around the country that use self-staffed online tutoring.

The Tutoring Toolbar 15 Online tutoring is the future. Managed appropriately, it is an economical, efficient, personal, and professional answer to student needs – and it works! One of the bright spots of the semester is the work your tutors do. I had some students who could not have passed without your group’s help. Your tutors need to know that they are appreciated by faculty. W. Marquart, HCC English professor